Friday, November 07, 2008

Paypal Integration

I recently have been setting up an ecommerce site from the ground up. One of the task at hand was to incorporate Paypal as a method to the checkout process. Paypal offers many ways to do this. From APIs that process the credit cards on your site to passing off variables over, to simply adding a buy now button on each product.

I opted for a middle of the road option at first, which they label _cart. HEre is the code:


This option allows you to gather your products in your shopping cart and send each item to be listed individually on one invoice in the Paypal site. The problem is that this option does not allow the developer to submit discount or coupons.

This posed a major challenge as the site I was building makes use of coupons and other special promotions such as free shipping based on benchmarked dollars spent.

The solution, set the cmd hidden field to _xclick and pass all the items in one description field. It's not as pretty or user friendly as the previous solution, but you then only have to pass Paypal a total amount which includes all discounts, tax, shipping charges all in one line.



The bottom line is that as you are developing Web sites you will be thrown several curves. You will encounter a multitude of problems. The best thing to do is to go at it, do some research and thing of simple solutions. Don't get wrap up on the problem, the best solutions are simple, effective, and best of all easy to code.

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posted by Death is Forever at 12:27 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Are you in a pyramid scheme?

Next time you find yourself sitting in a business meeting, instead of zoning out, pay attention to how things go down. Someone comes up with a new idea, the executive thinks the idea is brilliant. Together they identify who is going to perform the task, the executive will leave the meeting and head over to the CEOs office and present the idea. He will take full credit for the idea or he will say it was a collaboration from the originator and himself. Some lowly man down the totem pole will put in over time, they might even put in a weekend or two to accommodate this brilliant idea into their already full plate of tasks. Once compile and completed the sales person will bring in new money to the company where the CEO will congratulate the executive on a brilliant thought and a great job well done, while the lowly individual will get to put in many more extra hours and keep delivering product for another 20 years and perhaps one day get noticed and promoted to head janitor.

Wikipedia describes a pyramid scheme as a non-sustainable business model that involves the exchange of money primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme, usually without any product or service being delivered. It has been known to come under many guises. In other words, the lowest man in the bottom does all the work while the ones above gets all the glory.

The bottom line is that you want to get yourself out of the bottom of the pyramid and march up the diagonal. In order to do so, you need to identify what makes you unique and sets you apart. What do you bring to the table? You must enjoy doing something that others don't. You enjoy doing because you are good at it. Take your talent and find the right place where you will now be able to sell it as the commodity. You, my friend, will not longer be at the bottom putting in the extra time and effort into tasks that other dreamt up for you; you will now be delegating to others and only performing the tasks which you enjoy.

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posted by Death is Forever at 8:56 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

Sunday, February 17, 2008

"Winning" Super Bowl shirts end up in Nicaragua

The superbowl this year was a little different for me. Besides being the most boring one I ever watched, I was accompanied by a few friends and colleagues. I never had a superbowl party before, but the turnout was good and everyone claimed to had fun.

Why I am writing about this today, when it happened such a while ago, mainly because I just read story about shirts ending up in Nicaragua. Shirts that were premade with thoughts that the Patriots were designed to be te dream team, with an undefeated season, they were expected to be superbowl champs. Instead, the Giants came out of nowhere with Manning making an exciting fourth quarter manuvering and claiming victory!

Back to the story, "shirts and caps proclaiming the victory of the New England Patriots -- when the American football team actually lost the latest Super Bowl -- have ended up in the hands of poor Nicaraguan children." This is a great act of charity and donation for an empoverish country, but what of the erronous information on them? Should the shirts really be given out even though many are to benefit?

What a dilemma? Erronous information being circulated around a third world country or a nice act of kindness.

The bottom line is that we must put our own selfishness aside for the greater good. I think Voltaire and Locke had it right. These men influence the US founding fathers into creating liberty for all and for all to be free to do what is best for the common good! Locke always aregued that property is a natural right and it is derived from labor, but what labor is there involve in charitable things, but the labor of good. However, in his essay, the social contract, he postulates that an exchange of goods wold not take place if the parties involved whee not satisfied, in the aforementined sory and exchanged took place, therefore it must had been good. Children obtain useless shirts which would not have derived a profit while the manufacturer obtained a charitable tax write off and the gratitude of many.

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posted by Death is Forever at 8:48 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

St. Augustine is old but has lots of style

The communities in St. Augustine are designed in such a way that you feel like you are in the middle of no where, yet you drive out of the community entrance and there are shops, bars, and plenty of nightlife.

This past weekend I finally got to go out and get to see what's around nearby the new digs. This new chapter is very interesting. There is a lot going on and yet feels like there is not much. Within ten minutes I can find an outlet store center with over 200 shops, mostly top name designers.

Five minutes past the outlets, I can find downtown St. Augustine. There is a lot of history there. I didn't arrive downtown until after 4p.m. on Sunday. Everything closes there early, but what I saw I enjoyed. St. Augustine is the first city in the United States. There was a demonstration happening near the Castillo of San Marcos, a Spanish fort designed and built in the 1600's in an effort to guard the city. The old fort help the Spaniards keep a hold of Florida from the Brits for many years. During the American Revolution, this fort was a British stronghold, and later it served as a battery for the US Coastal defense system.

This fort is now one of the major tourist attractions in St. Augustine. They happened to be having a very nice demonstration of how the Spaniards dressed and weapons used while I was visiting. They fired off riffles and a canon. The later was quite loud and although we were forewarned to cover our ears, one could still feel the body rattle and shake, enough to skip a beat. All and all a very interesting visit. I will need to come back and see more, a lot more.

The bottom line is that when you find yourself in a new location, it is very important to drive around and get to know the area. Not only do you get to see a lot of interesting stuff, but when it visitor season opens, otherwise known as "the relatives are visiting", there are plenty of ways and places to keep them out of the house.

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posted by Death is Forever at 9:40 PM 0 Comments Links to this post